by Eric Juneau
My people are great students and better designers. I go to sleep. I will need my strength tomorrow. I plan to stretch out a little before leaving.
Imagine living in a box where you can’t stand up all the way. Then someone comes along and lifts the roof a couple of feet. Yeah, it’s been like that, for years.
¤
Morning came. I rose, scrubbed, dressed in work clothes, and left the room. I walked the halls in the general direction of the lifts and eateries. I bought a protein wafer and munched.
I did a little negative feedback to see how well I was being watched. I’d never done it before, too scared of getting caught. But today was different. Still, even I can get a little nervous when my life is at stake.
I turn off all outward response to stimuli. I turn off all nonverbal communication. Eighty-five percent of techie communication is nonverbal. Control that, control it all. And you can’t do it.
People can tell something’s wrong, but can’t tell what. Their bodies send off unconscious signals as they try to elicit something. I simply deny them that satisfaction. Stress levels rise as people farther and farther away get the unconscious message that something weird is happening.
I smile. It’s the first expression I’ve shown since leaving my room. It has the effect of a hammer ringing on steel. Everyone turns and stares at me.
I walk away, still smiling, though throwing off waves of calm. The people sigh. And I’m still alive. The geode worked. Good job Dad.
So I go to the engine room, talk the main guy there into setting the pressure seals to burst in ten minutes, skedaddle to the transport room, grab me a programmable bird from the man in charge, and take off in a flash of ions toward home.
I’m too far away to see the explosion. Maybe the boom was big enough to cascade down the line of ships and throw some asteroids about to boot. That’d be a fine farewell and leave the numbers a little more on my side’s favor.
¤
I get back home after a nap. Yeah, I can sleep at will. I just fiddle with the old hippocampus and I’m out. The hindbrain is easy-peesy. Our children learn that trick at five years old, about the time they’re mastering the alphabet.
My ship slides right through the satellite shield surrounding our moon. There is some great firepower up here, inert as radon now, but flipping great, nonetheless. My ship settles with a bump onto the oblong hunk of rock and anchors zip out from its underbelly to secure it in the near empty gravity. I bobble my way to the door and out.
The ship disintegrates to smoke when I’m twenty feet away. I smile as I see a familiar figure pointing what looks like a brown rock in the direction of my now-atomized ship. He hails me with a wave and I bound over to him, the reflexes of my childhood coming back like a second set of nerve fibers.
“Took you guys long enough.” Dad looked a little more lined around the eyes, but overall his knobby self looked the same as last I’d seen him.
“Have a nice trip?” He pocketed the rock. I didn’t get a chance to look at it. There’d be time later. I had some catching up to do.
“Did some damage on my way out,” I say.
He chortled. “You always were one for the dramatics.”
“Everyone back?” We had a number of fellows out and about doing military ‘work.’
“By tomorrow.” We slow-mo walk our way to the main compound. “Mom will be glad to see you.”
¤
You’re confused, so I’ll fill you in. First off, don’t worry. There won’t be another war. There won’t be the need.
It’s like this. Back in the old war, you had us cold. We didn’t have the tech to compete. You should have wiped us out. We are Human, after all. You should know how Humans act when threatened.
Instead, your arrogance gave us time.
All species survive by adaption. You went tech and lost the ability to adapt. We anchored adaptability to our society early. With so few left, we adapted to the new situation. Your technology was nothing time could not beat.
You don’t even understand your own mind. That’s the crux. You and I can’t really have a conversation until you do.
Really, I should thank you. You opened our eyes to the extroverted worldview. We’d been so focused on our ability to govern our minds and bodies that we’d lost sight of the bigger picture, the worlds at large. And, it almost was the end of us.
But it wasn’t our end, and you weren’t bright enough to finish the job. So now we are coming. We are coming to take away your toys, the toys you used to kill us from afar. And you can’t stop us. You will die, all of you.
Get ready.
Jason Lairamore is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and horror who lives in Oklahoma with his beautiful wife and their three monstrously marvelous children. He is a published finalist of the 2012 SQ Mag annual contest and the winner of the 2013 Planetary Stories flash fiction contest. His work is both featured and forthcoming in more than twenty publications, including Third Flatiron publications, Postscripts to Darkness, and Pantheon magazine to name a few. This is his second appearance in Stupefying Stories, his first being “This Cat Must Die!” in Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE.
WATER PRESSURE
By Anna Yeatts
NEIL TRIPPED ON THE BATHMAT and landed flat on his naked backside. The whole trailer shook. He cupped his hands over his junk. “What the hell’re you doing in my shower?”
The ghost standing under the spray didn’t answer. With the water pressure so low, her features rippled and morphed like a fluttering projection screen.
“Crystal?” Neil squinted. His head hurt. Hangovers stunk. “Explains why you never came back from the 7-11 Friday. Justin stayed out half the night looking for you.”
Crystal, his buddy’s girlfriend, shrugged. She pantomimed a cigarette.
“Naw.” Neil snagged a ratty towel. “Not cause you had his smokes. He’s outta his mind. Got your picture taped up all over town.”
She frowned. The water made her lips do the wave... up, down, up, down.
Steam fogged up the mirror, the air muggy as a South Carolina swamp. Neil knotted the towel around his waist.
“Can’t you talk?”
Crystal opened her mouth only nothing came out, kinda like a horror movie on mute.
“That sucks,” he said.
She pursed her lips.
“Why’re you here?”
In the Coldplay t-shirt and cut-offs from the night she’d gone missing, Crystal poked her chest.
“You?”
She smiled.
Neil did a little strut.
Crystal frowned. Neil sobered up. Might be a long time before he had a hottie in his shower again. Even if she was a ghost.
Crystal clawed her fingers.
“Zombies!”
She glared.
Neil shrugged. “Dude can hope.”
Opening her arms again, this time she snapped them together like noshing the world’s biggest wad of chewing tobacco.
“Jaws!”
She nodded.
“A shark ate you?” The running water made Neil have to pee. “Hold up. Turn around?”
Her forehead wrinkled.
“I gotta whiz.”
She faced away. Neil had to admit Justin was a lucky bastard. Girl had one fine bumper.
The pipes groaned when he flushed. Crystal’s form wavered.
“Something ate you?” he asked. “Don’t got many bears or cougars around.” He tried to remember all the critters with teeth. “Wolf?”
She waved him off.
“What then?”
She tapped her foot then pointed to herself.
“Naw.” Neil laughed. “You didn’t eat yourself.”
She flipped him off. Neil laughed harder. Her fists balled tight.
“Not funny.” Sheesh, he still smelled like last night’s weed. “Try again.”
When she ran her hands down her body, indicating boobs and hips, Neil about lost it. He readjusted the towel.
She pointed to Nei
l and did the sexy body hug again.
His cheeks got hotter. “Un-uh. Justin’s my man. Not that you’re not hot but—”
Crystal threw him the double-bird.
“Speaking of, why aren’t you haunting Justin?”
Her face crumpled. She shook her head and made the jaw-snap.
“Justin’s eaten too?” His gut slammed into his ticker. This was some serious crap.
Crystal’s forehead crunched up like girls did before they started to cry. Her image melted into the shower spray.
“Wait.” Neil grabbed for her, cold water pelting his chest.
Her brown eyes were the last to go. They looked sad. So sad. Then those last two specks of color were gone, swirling round and round until they swept down the drain.
Neil shivered.
He watched the water run, hoping she’d come back. Hoping his best friend since kindergarten wasn’t marinating in digestive juices.
He changed car batteries for a living. What did he know about ghosts and murders and snappy jaws?
“Neil?” His mama’s voice pierced the trailer’s thin walls. “You wasting all the hot water?”
Neil yanked the door open. His mama squinted at him.
“Look like hell in a hand basket.” Loose skin wobbled above the neck of her pale green house coat. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” He pushed past, clutching the towel.
“Don’t you nothing me.” She grabbed him by the elbow. Laws, the woman was strong.
He couldn’t tell her he’d seen a ghost in the shower. She’d sign him up for the Montel show faster than she could say nut-ball.
“Justin’s in trouble.”
She sucked her teeth. “Justin’s a good boy, but he’s too much like his daddy. Poison swillers. You tell him not to drink so much.”
Neil kissed her cheek. “I will.”
“Don’t forget to roll up the truck windows. Gonna rain today.” A swift smack to the butt let him know she cared.
¤
Justin lived out near the county line, off a dirt road behind his landlady’s house. Potholes bounced Neil’s truck so hard the spare gas cans about flew into the cab with him. Pulling up to the squat rental house, Neil parked behind Justin’s ‘88 Firebird, a thin sheen of dust dulling the emerald green paint job.
A fat bluejay squawked at him from the porch railing, the rising wind ruffling its feathers.
“You in there, man?” Neil called.
No answer but the flap of wings as the jay took off.
“Open up.” Neil felt like he’d swallowed a dirty oil pan, all greasy and slick creeping up his throat. “C’mon, dude. This ain’t funny.”
He tried the door handle. Locked tight.
“Damn it.”
Neil jumped off the porch and into the overgrown hydrangeas covering the front windows. He smashed his face against the screen. Not much to see, only a faded recliner in the corner and a flat screen leaning against the wall.
Jogging back to his truck, he dug his hunting knife out of the glove box. A minute’s work and he had the screen loose and the window lock pried open.
Neil face-planted onto the cheap carpet. The place reeked of beer and sweaty tube socks. But something didn’t smell like Justin; a girly sweetness like the vanilla body wash Neil borrowed from his mama when he ran out of bar soap.
“So help me, you jump out of a closet, scare the piss outta me, I’m going to whoop your tail.” His laugh got caught in his windpipe and came out all strangled and high pitched.
Maybe this was all nothing. Justin could’ve gotten picked up for flipping off old ladies in the Piggly-Wiggly again. Or be coming down from huffing paint behind the Home Depot.
He jogged to the bathroom and yanked open the shower curtain. “Hey, you in here?”
Nothing but mildew. Neil scratched the seat of his coveralls. He glanced in the murky toilet bowl. Nope.
He turned on the shower knob. The pipes thumped before water splattered out.
“Uh, help?” Laws, he was talking to a shower. Keep this up and he’d be singing songs to the rain barrel.
Crystal’s legs then the rest of her body slid out of the shower head like a malformed calf slipping out of its mama.
Neil let loose a few of his favorite cuss words. Crystal grinned.
“Where should I look?” Neil asked.
She pointed over Neil’s shoulder.
“Naw. I looked in the bedroom.”
Her jaw clenched, Crystal held up two fingers and walked them down her arm.
“Where to? I came down the drive. Only passed the landlady’s—”
Crystal gave him a thumb’s up.
Thunder shook the house. Not wanting to get electrocuted by lightning, Neil cranked the water off. Crystal slid down the drain.
“Idiot!” He kicked the toilet bowl.
¤
He drove back down the dirt road to the landlady’s place. The tidy brick house had black shutters and a shady yard full of sycamore trees. Neil rang the doorbell.
Justin had neglected to mention his landlady was hotter than a tin roof in August. Neil swallowed and tried to think Boy Scout thoughts. He meant to look the little woman in the eyes but his gaze kept dropping. Curves like that’d make a man do something foolish.
“Yes?” She smiled and Neil’s stomach went into freefall. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, ma’am!” Neil stood tall, puffing his chest out. “I bet you can!”
“Have we met?”
Neil’s cheeks grew hot. He stuck out his hand. “Neil Raeford, ma’am.”
She glanced at the darkening sky and scowled something fierce.
“Ma’am? You all right?”
She gave him a look that made his heart stop beating—big, brown, cocker spaniel eyes a man could get lost in, and the reddest mouth he’d ever seen.
“Neil, was it?” His name was music on her lips. Like flutes and bells and tinkly things. “Call me Missy.”
If this was what a heart attack felt like, sign him up.
Neil tried to ask if she’d seen Justin, but she was already headed down a carpeted hallway toward an airy kitchen.
Rain pattered onto the roof, a smattering at first then deepening into a steady thrum.
“Looks like you’re stuck here until the rain stops,” she said. “I wouldn’t go out in this mess unless my life depended on it.”
“I don’t want to put you out none.” Neil stepped inside and reached to close the door behind him. “But I’d be grateful to wait a spell ‘til it lets—”
Crystal perched in a sycamore tree, bare knees hugged to her chest.
Lightning crackled. Neil startled. Crystal stood at the foot of the porch. In the heavy rain, her image was clear. She made the va-va-voom silhouette with her hands.
Neil slammed the front door.
Missy opened a door off the hallway to Neil’s left. “Something wrong, hun?”
“Justin,” he blurted. “I’ve gotta find him.”
“He’s missing?” She smiled, sweet as peaches. “I saw him just a few days ago.”
Over Missy’s shoulder, Neil could see out the kitchen window, rain shuddering down the glass. Crystal pressed against the pane. She opened her ghost arms wide and made the jaw snap. Neil shivered.
Missy closed the distance between herself and Neil. He shivered again but for a whole different reason. No way an armful of woman like this could’ve hurt anybody, he reckoned.
“Anybody know where you’re at this morning?” Missy asked, all dimples and red lips.
Outside, Crystal nodded, rain strumming through her.
“No,” Neil said. “Reckon not.”
Crystal’s mouth twisted into a grim line.
“Listen, I gotta find Justin.” Neil glanced at Crystal as she melted into the rain, his belly feeling a tad queasy.
Missy’s fingers squeezed his. “Help me remember. Yesterday? Or the day before?” She led him toward the opened doorway.
/> The back of her thighs twitched.
Neil reckoned it had been a stressful morning. He must be imagining things.
Missy tugged Neil toward her. He sighed. Her lips were so red. Red as ripe strawberries. Lush and full of juice, ready for licking.
His mouth watered
Missy’s left thigh pushed outward against the tight denim of her skirt like a hand slapping off a cover.
Neil balked, eyeing her bedroom. Grubby sheets covered a queen-sized air mattress. A box of Hefty bags filled in as a nightstand.
“Miss Missy,” he said. “Let’s talk about this.” He tried to wriggle his hands free. Dang, but she held tight. Missy and his mama could have a right good arm wrestling match.
She grabbed his waist. “Talk later.”
Neil wasn’t going to lie. He liked the way she felt pressed up against him. A lot actually.
No way a tiny bit of woman could hurt a beefy guy like Justin. Or even a scrappy gal like Crystal. Maybe he was hallucinating.
She brushed a kiss against his throat.
Neil couldn’t hold out any longer. It was like staring at a pan of warm chocolate chip cookies with his mouth watering and his belly rumbling and not being able to have one.
“I reckon that’s all right.” He buried his face in her glossy black hair.
Vanilla. That sticky wrong smell from Justin’s house.
He yanked his head up. “I gotta whiz.”
And he did. Felt like his bladder was gonna explode.
Missy pouted. Neil fought the urge to lick her bottom lip, knowing she’d done something bad to Justin, feeling it in his bones.
But second base had never looked so damned tempting.
“I do. Swear.” He did the potty dance and gave her a pleading smile.
Her lower body pulsed.
Neil shoved her away and dashed down the hallway.
“Get on back here!” she yelled.
Neil sprinted, but she was way too fast, even for a sociopath.
The front door knob slipped in his hand. She leaped onto his back, arms wrapped around his neck. Neil gagged, trying to pry her off. Her bare legs locked around his waist, but it was the heavy wrongness pressed against his lower back that worried him the most.